The Perfect Player:Ayanokoji in the Squid Game

The blood had long stopped dripping. It pooled beneath the bodies, congealing in patches where warmth once lingered. I sat above them—not because I chose to, but because there was nowhere else fitting.

They called this a massacre. I called it a correction.

The spotlight above hummed faintly, casting a pale glow over the twisted limbs and slack jaws that surrounded me. Their eyes—if still open—spoke of confusion more than fear. As if they couldn't understand how someone like me, a waiter in a pressed white shirt and quiet shoes, had orchestrated their end.

I adjusted the mask on my face. A crack ran through it now—earned from the first strike, the only one that came close. Fitting. Even glass breaks beautifully when it serves its purpose.

I wasn't angry. I wasn't anything.

A voice crackled through the silence, from the back of the room. "Why... Why did you do this?"

I leaned forward, elbows on knees, and met the question with the only answer that ever mattered.

"To show them what happens when order is mistaken for weakness."The voice trembled again, this time from behind a toppled table near the far wall. I hadn't noticed him before. A young man, suit stained with someone else's blood, clutching his side like he still had a chance.

"You were... just a server," he rasped. "You... took orders."

I stood.

The silence cracked beneath the weight of my footsteps.

"No," I said. "I observed. And the difference between those who serve and those who survive is knowing when to stop listening."

He tried to crawl backward, but his legs were done—shaking, useless.

"You're a monster," he whispered.

I stopped in front of him, crouching low enough for my cracked mask to meet his fading gaze. "No," I said again, quieter this time. "I'm the result of monsters like you."

His eyes widened—recognition, maybe. Or regret. It didn't matter now.

A low creak echoed through the rafters above. Reinforcements? Survivors?

I tilted my head toward the sound, then looked back at the man.

"Let them come," I said. "Let them see what remains of their order."

I stood and walked away from him, the spotlight trailing behind me like a loyal shadow.

The next act was about to begin.
Observation Room,14 minutes later,
The smell of blood hit them first.

Six figures advanced through the narrow hallway, boots silent on the polished tile, weapons raised. Each one bore the insignia of Division Null, a covert government unit reserved for only the most anomalous threats—threats that didn't make it into the news because there was never anything left to report.

Agent Hoshino, second-in-command, gave the signal. They stopped at the main entrance to the banquet hall. The door was half-splintered, hanging open like a jaw broken at the hinge.

"Thermals read one heat signature," whispered the field technician through their comms. "Seated. Breathing is steady. No hostiles detected... besides him."

Hoshino didn't move. She just stared.

The scene before them was biblical—an altar of bodies beneath a singular man, seated calmly in the epicenter of carnage like he had been painted there.

She recognized the mask. Everyone in the room did. It had been classified. Burned from every file.

"I thought he died in the fire," one of them muttered.

Hoshino didn't answer. She lowered her rifle, slowly.

"Don't engage. Not yet."

"But—he's unarmed—"

"No. He's prepared."

The masked figure shifted, slowly turning his head toward them.

Even from this distance, she could feel it—the way the room bent around him, like gravity had chosen a new center.

Hoshino's breath caught.

This wasn't an operation.

This was an audience.
Ayanokoji-Present
They came, just as I expected.

Six of them—each perfectly spaced, disciplined in formation, scanning the room like machines dressed as men. Division Null. A name meant to instill fear, to imply erasure. But names don't matter to the dead.

I didn't move.

I let them look.

The spotlight overhead cast long shadows behind me, stretching like black fingers toward their boots. One of them flinched. Not physically—mentally. You can always tell. Microsecond delays. The kind that come when instinct loses confidence.

I tilted my head, watching the one in the middle. The woman. She wasn't afraid.

But she was remembering.

Good.

I could see it in her eyes: the file they thought was destroyed. The face that should've burned in the fire. The child they buried in paperwork and silence.

They never understood what they made in that place. What they killed.

And what they woke up again.

One of them raised his rifle, ever so slightly.

I smiled behind the mask. Just enough for the crack to stretch a little wider.

Still predictable.

I stood—slowly, so they'd feel every second of it. Not to provoke. Just to remind.

This wasn't a rescue mission.

It was a reintroduction.

Ayanokoji – 3 Hours Later, In Transit
They didn't stop me.

They couldn't.

The escape wasn't cinematic—it was surgical. A power failure, a redirected feed, a perfectly timed gas leak three floors below that bought me ninety seconds. All tools I planted days before I ever stepped into that building.

By the time Division Null reached the balcony, all they found was the cracked mask resting on the ledge.

It faced the moon.

It always does.

Now, I sat in the back of a blacked-out van, en route to Incheon. A fake passport burned in my pocket under the name Lee Kwon-jae. My Korean wasn't perfect, but it didn't need to be. I wouldn't be speaking much.

I watched the city pass in blurred streaks through the window. Seoul would give me what I needed—distance, anonymity, and most importantly... proximity.

Because rumors were already circling about another facility. Not the White Room. Something newer. Sharper.

My father never stops building cages.

But this time, I wasn't inside one.

Before I left, I made sure the message reached him. Hidden in a wiped terminal, buried beneath layers of false intel, protected by a cipher only two people could break—me and the man who created me.

It simply read:

"You perfected control.
Now watch what happens when it's unshackled.
I'll be waiting. – K"